Chimney Leaks & Storm Damage in Norcross, GA

Chimney Leaks & Storm Damage for Norcross Homeowners

Historic Norcross has one of the best-preserved Victorian downtowns in the metro, and the houses around it carry chimneys to match: tall, narrow, often multi-flue, built when the fireplace was the only heat in the room. Those need real masonry knowledge. Beyond the historic district, Norcross is largely 1970s onward, much of it now with gas appliances retrofitted into flues designed for wood — which is the recurring theme across Gwinnett generally, and the thing most likely to be quietly wrong. Norcross is toward the northeastern edge of our radius but comfortably inside it.

Victorian multi-flue stacks around the historic downtown; 1970s-onward housing with gas appliances retrofitted into wood-designed flues.

A chimney is the only part of a roof that is deliberately full of holes, and in a climate that delivers as much rain as Atlanta does, the odds catch up with it. Water gets in at four places: a cracked crown, failed flashing where the stack passes through the roof, a missing or damaged cap, and brickwork that has become porous enough to drink. The difficulty is that the stain inside the house rarely appears under the actual entry point — water tracks down the outside of the flue and shows up a storey below. Sealing where the stain is achieves nothing, which is why people end up paying for the same leak three times.